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OPINION: A mate of yours truly wonders if the rush by some to implement taxes on agricultural emissions might just leave the country’s farmers in the proverbial.
“Has anyone considered that if a bull harvests say 10 kilograms of DM a day and puts out less methane while digesting it – ( i.e. it farts and belches a little less than the bull next door),” he asks.
“What happens when he excretes? Does his sh*t emit more methane on the ground than the next door’s bull does?”
Old mate suggests the industry need to ‘get to the bottom of this crap’ and analyse the whole process.
If we don’t, he suggests farming in NZ will become “unprofitable, un-bankable and unsustainable”.
He wonders if we are being fed with a whole lot of “bulls*t” and will find ourselves “soundly in the crap”.
A hypothesis in a major dairy research programme that bulls genetically proven to be low methane producers could pass this trait onto their lactating daughters has been proven to be incorrect.
New research suggests sheep and beef farmers could improve both profitability and emissions efficiency by increasing lamb weaning weights, with only marginal changes in total greenhouse gas emissions.
Reducing emissions is a constant battle at Yealands Wines in the Awatere Valley, with nearly 20 years chipping away at carbon.
Alliance Group has commissioned a new heat pump system at its Mataura processing plant in Southland.
OPINION: Your old mate reckons townie Brooke van Velden, the Minister of Workplace (or is it Woke Place) Relations is now showing how underemployed she is as a minister by initiating an investigation into whether young children should be banned from collecting eggs on farms and feeding animals.
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson says his party – NZ First - isn’t opposed to the “trade element” of a free trade deal with India.
The managing director of a company seeking to build a solar farm in Canterbury says receiving fast-track approval is a “really positive outcome”.
Retiring MP and dairy farmer Mark Cameron is blasting the Green Party for proposing to ban the use of synthetic fertiliser and cutting cow numbers.
A huge reduction in ACC claims from on-farm accidents over the last five years is due to thousands of small, practical decisions being made in sheds, yards, paddocks and around kitchen tables across the country, says Safer Farms ambassador Lindy Nelson.
Wayne and Ange Moxham of Horowhenua have just been named as Fonterra's top organic performer for milksolids. As well as providing organic milk to Fonterra, the couple also sell Udderly Organic milk to more than 100 outlets in the region and are embarking on another exciting venture producing organic gelato. Reporter Peter Burke went along to see their farming operation.
Certainty and a clear understanding of the needs of rural communities is a critical outcome in the series of government reforms that are taking place at present.
OPINION: Central Hawke's Bay farmer Mark Warren recently told the Hawke's Bay Times it's time for a conversation about allowing…
OPINION: A nation that relies as heavily as NZ does on functional global shipping lanes will have to do its…
